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Memorandum of Understanding
Concerning Levels of Service
between
The Higher Education Funding Councils for England, Scotland and Wales and the Department of Education for Northern Ireland
and
The JNT Association, trading as UKERNA
Version 3.5 - Final Text for 1997/98
November 1997.

Contents

1. Purpose
2. Definitions
3. Services to be provided by UKERNA
4. Service Levels
5. Monitoring and Auditing of Services
6. Relationships between UKERNA and Client Institutions
7. Submission of a budget and an operational plan
8. Creation of new services
9. Reporting
10. Charging Principles
11. Sub-Contracting
12. Annual Review
13. Change control

Annex A - Operational Production Services Provided by UKERNA
A1. Definitions
A2. Operational Services
A3. Support and Information Services
A4. Security Services
Annex B - Format for the Annual Budget and Operational Plan
Annex C - Format for Quarterly Report on the Operational Plan
Annex D - Format of Financial Plan
Annex E - Change Control Procedure

1. Purpose

UKERNA will provide a set of computer networking and related services to the UK research and education community. The Higher Education Funding Councils and the Department of Education for Northern Ireland (the Funding Bodies) will be represented by their Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and its Advisory Committee on Networking (ACN). The JISC Secretariat acts on a day-to-day basis to interpret the policy established by the JISC. The Higher Education Funding Council for England will make payments, on behalf of all the funding councils, to UKERNA in order to have such services provided. The levels of service provided will be monitored by the Technical Advisory Unit of the Joint Information Systems Committee (TAU).

This Service Level Agreement defines the form of the services to be supplied and the reporting requirements associated with them.

2. Definitions

In the remainder of this Memorandum of Understanding, "Community" refers to members of the UK research and higher education institutions which are eligible to receive UKERNA services under the terms of this Memorandum of Understanding. Those institutions, referred to as "eligible institutions", are listed in the standing document "Institutions sponsored by the JISC"1, which is to be kept up to date by the JISC Secretariat.

The JISC Secretariat shall be responsible for notifying UKERNA of revisions of this document, and UKERNA shall respond, where necessary, with a change control statement quantifying additional costs or savings and updating the list of institutions which are to receive service under this agreement. These institutions are referred to below as "client institutions".

3. Services to be provided by UKERNA

The services to be provided by UKERNA under this Service Level Agreement are operational, information, support and security services; subject to the targets set in Annex A, UKERNA will provide

  1. a set of operational services which allow users at client institutions to communicate with each other and with users at sites outside the Community.
  2. a set of information services and support services which increase the effectiveness of the use of the basic operational services.
  3. a set of security services which provide response to security emergencies and provide information and advice on security matters.


The Funding Bodies require a basic set of services to be provided to all client institutions. Other services will be optional; that is to say, they will be offered by the JISC, but will only be provided when client institutions explicitly request them. Such optional services may be separately chargeable.

The full set of services to be offered or provided by UKERNA under this agreement is listed in Annex A.

4. Service Levels

This document is a single service level agreement, covering a number of service categories, each of which is defined in a separate subclause in Annex A. For each of the service categories specified in Annex A, a parameter or set of parameters which gives a measure of the quality of the service is also specified. The target values (or sets of values) for these parameters represent the Service Level which UKERNA commits to provide.

UKERNA shall not be required to honour these commitments in case of Force Majeure.

5. Monitoring and Auditing of Services

The services shall be subject to monitoring and to occasional auditing on the following basis:

  1. One of the purposes for which the JISC has established the TAU is to monitor the service level agreement. The TAU may be assisted, where necessary, by the appointment of independent experts. From time to time they shall carry out a technical audit of one or more of the services defined in Annex A. The purposes of any such audit will be to assess the extent to which UKERNA has met the requirements specified for the Service or Services being audited and to suggest ways in which these services could be improved. Such audits will pay particular attention to the performance of UKERNA with respect to the listed indicators. The audits will also take account of the budget available.
  2. The JISC may also request an audit of the methods and procedures used by UKERNA to measure the values of the service level parameters defined for the services. The purpose of the audit will be to confirm the accuracy of UKERNA's reports. Client institutions may ask the TAU to instigate an investigation in cases where they have prima facie evidence that the service levels are not being met. UKERNA shall receive at least 10 working days notice of any such audit.
  3. Technical audits will normally be carried out no more frequently than once per year. The auditors shall have access to all reports described in clause 9 below, and to any material provided by UKERNA to client institutions as part of UKERNA's service provision. UKERNA will allow the auditors to spend reasonable amounts of time interviewing UKERNA staff. UKERNA will be given the opportunity to make comments to the auditor on a draft of the auditor's report. A copy of the auditor's final report shall be made available to UKERNA within one month of its presentation to the JISC.
  4. The costs to the TAU of employing technical auditors and of expenses directly incurred by them shall be borne by the JISC.

6. Relationships between UKERNA and Client Institutions

All client institutions which receive UKERNA services shall have a formal agreement with UKERNA as a condition of service. Aspects of the agreement which are common to all institutions will be documented by the "Terms and Conditions for the Use of a JANET Connection" issued by UKERNA.

UKERNA shall establish agreements with each site individually, making their acceptance of the terms explicit and covering site-specific details. UKERNA shall keep records, available to the JISC, of the institutions connected, and, for each institution, shall record in them:

  1. the optional services, if any, selected by the client institution;
  2. the financial payments, if any, to be made by the client institution, or by UKERNA;
  3. the contact points within the client institution for dealing with fault reports and other communication;
  4. the other institutions, if any, supported by the client institution under the licensing procedures, and the responsibilities of the client institution for the services provided to those institutions.

In general, UKERNA will communicate only with the central computing service (or equivalent organisational unit) in any client institution. Although UKERNA will take reasonable steps to deal with enquiries and demands from end users, such steps will normally take the form of referring the enquiry or demand to the most appropriate contact point (as defined in (c) above) in the end user's or another client institution. Exceptions may, however, cover bookings for conference or meeting attendance and other such activities which, in their nature, involve individual end users.

If an institution does not provide the necessary information and discharge the necessary obligations, UKERNA may be unable to provide the defined level of service. UKERNA will alert the JISC Secretariat to any such failure on the part of an institution, and agree subsequent actions with it. In particular, serious breaches of the JANET Acceptable Use Policy may lead to suspension of service.

7. Submission of a budget and an operational plan

A budget and an operational plan shall be drawn up to define the activities under this SLA to be carried out in any particular year (this planning year starts on 1st April). The budget shall also include an indicative forward look for a further two years, showing the expected level and content of subsequent budgets. Similarly, the operational plan shall include an outline plan for the second and third years following the year covered in detail. The forward looks in the budget and operational plan may include proposals for new services (see clause 8).

  1. UKERNA shall submit a draft budget and a preliminary operational plan eight months before the end of the previous planning and financial year, using the format in Annex B. Some of these forward planning details may, at this stage, be provisional.
  2. the JISC shall provide UKERNA with feedback on these drafts not less than six months before the end of the previous planning and financial year.
  3. UKERNA shall submit a revised budget and plan, following the direction from the JISC, to the JISC Secretariat five months before the end of the previous year.
  4. Following approval in principle by the JISC, the JISC Secretariat, with assistance from the TAU, shall negotiate the final budget details with UKERNA. This process shall be completed not less than two months before the budget and plan come into effect.

8. Creation of new services

New services will be discussed in outline by the ACN before a detailed plan is drawn up. This allows decisions in principle on the need and importance of new services to be taken before resources are committed.

New services will normally be introduced as part of the budget/forward look process, although, exceptionally, items may be introduced under the change control procedures to exploit unforeseen opportunities or to counter new and urgent needs. More speculative developments for which operational services cannot yet be planned will not normally be introduced in this way; the JISC has other programmes under which to manage such developments.

The definition of a new service involves:

  1. an outline service definition with a preliminary indication of the expected scale and performance of the service; an indication of when definite text for inclusion in this service level agreement can be defined should be given;
  2. a predicted date for availability of a available service and the level of confidence to be attached to this prediction;
  3. a plan for any commissioning and piloting necessary to establish the service;
  4. a business case for the service, a budget for any piloting activity and an indicative budget for the eventual production service, throughout the three year forward look. The initial budget shall indicate estimates of any sub-contracted development costs and the forward look shall include estimated setup costs for the initial deployment of the production service. Savings or efficiency gains arising from the introduction of the service shall be clearly indicated.

9. Reporting

UKERNA shall provide copies suitable for reproduction of the following reports to the Secretary of the JISC and to the TAU at the times and the frequency indicated:

  1. for each of the Services, the agreed information relating to the reporting items listed for that service in Annex A (using the formats defined in the document "Formats for performance reports to the TAU"2); this information will be delivered each calendar month, by the sixth working day of the following month;
  2. a written summary, in the format given in Annex C, of progress with respect to the current operational plan and any necessary adjustments to the plan; this report will be delivered quarterly, by the tenth working day of the following quarter;
  3. financial plan, in the format given in Annex D, showing the expenditure profile to provide and support the services listed in Annex A; this plan will be delivered by the tenth working day following receipt of formal notification of budget;
  4. a report, of a quality and content suitable for general publication, including the principal activities and results of UKERNA in relation to the services listed in Annex A; the report will be produced each year, covering the year ending on 31st March; the report shall be delivered within fifty working days of the period covered.
  5. other reports requested by the JISC Secretariat from time to time; the content, format and deadline for the production of such reports shall be agreed between the JISC Secretariat and UKERNA on a case-by-case basis.

10. Charging Principles

Other services provided by UKERNA outwith this agreement shall not be subsidized by the funding associated with this agreement. Any UKERNA overhead costs shall be clearly apportioned between JISC supported services and other services offered.

Where a charge is made for services defined within this agreement, UKERNA shall collect the defined charges and report the receipts to the JISC broken down in terms of the services provided.

11. Sub-Contracting

UKERNA remains responsible for ensuring that the services are provided to the client institutions with the agreed levels of quality, even if it were to choose to sub-contract for the provision of some or all of the services covered by this Memorandum of Understanding.

12. Annual Review

The TAU and UKERNA shall review annually the list of services given in Annex A, starting six months before the end of the service year, and submit revisions to the JISC for their approval. The service year for this purpose shall start on the 1st April. At least two months before this anniversary, they shall by mutual agreement specify a revised list of the services which UKERNA will offer during the following twelve months and the values of the corresponding service level parameters.

Where the annual review makes significant changes to the set of services or to the service levels, a date during the following twelve months on which these changes will come into effect may be specified.

13. Change control

The definition of the services to be provided, and of the schedules, priorities and financial bases for them are normally established during an annual cycle of budget and operational plan approvals. Minor details of these approvals may, through force of circumstance, need to be varied on a shorter timescale. In such cases, the change procedures detailed in Annex E shall apply in the following circumstances:

  1. changes to the service level agreement; A register of changes will be held by the TAU; items for inclusion in it are to be agreed between TAU and UKERNA, and submitted to the JISC Secretariat for approval. The JISC Secretariat will consult the JISC or its advisory committees as appropriate for more significant changes.
  2. changes to the financial approvals; The JISC Secretariat shall communicate release of funds to UKERNA on the basis of the agreed budget. UKERNA may submit proposal for changes to the agreed budget to the JISC Secretariat.
  3. changes to the planning targets; UKERNA may propose changes to targets in its operational plan as part of its quarterly reporting against the plan. The JISC Secretariat shall inform UKERNA of agreed changes to the planning target, following any necessary consultation.

Note 1 : The current version of this document is version 1.0.

Note 2 : The current version of this document is version 1.0.